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The magazine of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science

Alumni Award Winner

BY Jason Togyer - Sat, 2011-08-13 19:08

Congratulations to Ram Raghunathan (CS'11), winner of the ninth-annual SCS Alumni Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Computer Science. Justin Weisz (CS'03,'07,'09), alumni award committee member, made the presentation to Ram (at right) during the SCS diploma ceremony in Pittsburgh on May 15.

Ram was honored for his thesis "Design and Implementation of a Power-Aware Load Balancer." His advisor was Mor Harchol-Balter, associate professor of computer science.

Established in 2003, the alumni award recognizes technical excellence in research and development by a graduating senior participating in the thesis research program. An alumni committee reviews student theses and oral and poster presentations, judging each work on factors such as originality, technical excellence, potential societal impact, accessibility and general excitement among the alumni community participating in the process.

"Ram's work was selected not only because of his technical quality but also because of the impact that it has on the state of the art and practice," says Grace Lewis (CS'01), who chaired the award committee. "In his work, Ram proposes a set of simple but effective algorithms for load balancing and for turning machines on and off in order to preserve energy. The results he shows are very promising and the applicability of his work for data centers and server farms looking to reduce power consumption and costs is very clear."

Ram will be joining our vibrant alumni base in New York City to work as an infrastructure developer at Tower Financial Capital.